The Campanile bell tower at the University of California Berkeley Campus, is pictured with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. Photographer Tim Wimborne/ Bloomberg News.

By now it's a baseline for many working in housing policy: costs associated with regulation mean delays in production, less supply, and higher prices for people that need housing. Yet it is something often challenged by those who suggest more money and subsidies are the solution to housing scarcity. The problem with that suggestion, however, is that even if we assumed that supply wouldn't reduce the higher prices associated with housing shortages, regulatory overreach would still mean subsidies for lower income people wouldn't go as far as they could. The Terner Center for Housing Innovation at Berkeley, released findings from discussions with people who build housing in the most expensive housing city in the country, San Francisco. What did they say?

Construction costs contribute directly to San Francisco’s affordability crisis, and increase the amount of subsidy needed to make affordable housing feasible. To provide just one example from a review of LIHTC cost certifications, in 2000, it cost approximately $265,000 per unit to build a 100-unit affordable housing building for families in the city, accounting for inflation. In 2016, a similar sized family building cost closer to $425,000 per unit, not taking into account other development costs (such as fees or the costs of capital) or changes in land values over this time period. As a result of these cost increases, developers need more subsidy for every unit, at a time when public resources for affordable housing have been dwindling.

A point I've made repeatedly is that even if we simply assumed housing as an entitlement, we'd still need more of it. Subsidies like capital set asides from tax levies or from the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program simply get burnt up from process and regulation, and that means fewer people with less money to spend on housing don't get help overcoming that barrier. What's the solution?

The consensus among the practitioners in this study was that the city should take even more direct measures to reduce permitting times, and to introduce more streamlined and predictable reviews and inspections. These inefficiencies rarely produce tangible benefits, but do increase both the hard and soft costs of development.

This is something Republicans understand, but somehow they haven't in the last two decades claimed housing as their own. That could be changing. In the age of Trump, Republicans on the west coast need something that can appeal to voters both in urban and rural areas, issues other than divisive issues like immigration and guns. Increasing housing supply to answer price concerns by anxious voters is consistent with liberal economics and efficient government. But the idea that housing scarcity can only be solved by subsidies and more taxation has been the Democratic line on housing. Republicans can make the point that taxing new housing, for example, with fees to create affordable housing is not only against their principles of cutting taxes but also doesn't truly help people with less money; in fact it make their lives worse.

One avenue is to quantify costs. In today's debates data is the litmus test, and the Terner Center's work, along with that of Washington's Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee, and study completed some time ago by the Urban Land Institute are providing much needed data. When the costs of subsidized housing reach $500,000 to $750,000 per unit, its time to get facts and then do something. What people struggling to make ends meet in dense but prosperous cities need is for government to take off the regulatory handcuffs from builders of all housing products, whether they are producing them for the market with or without subsidies.

For the past twenty years, I have been involved in public policy in the areas of education, health, and housing. Most recently I was housing director at a large regional non-profit, managing housing operations and development. At the same time, I have been an advocate for pr...